


The Scholar and the Swordsman

by DROLLmaeosaur



Category: Magic: The Gathering, Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: Alternate Universe, Implied Relationships, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7144502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DROLLmaeosaur/pseuds/DROLLmaeosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jace needs to make some money. Kallist is just along for the ride.<br/>An AU set in a world populated with swords, criminals and only the suggestion of morality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scholar and the Swordsman

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written and I won't apologize for it. Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner is one of my all-time favorite books and I wanted nothing more than to borrow her wonderful universe and let a few of my favorite characters play dress-up and run about within it. It helps that my brain drew fast and hard analogies between Alec and Richard, and Jace and Kallist. Plus, I'm always looking for an excuse to write anything with Kallist in it. For those readers who have no idea about which I'm speaking, worry not, no requisite knowledge of Kushner's works is necessary to understand this. I do however urge you to go read it. All of it. You won't be disappointed. Some of the better and best phrases and actions in this story that are not glaring references to MtG are her's, not mine.
> 
> I posted this to tumblr back when the Origins set was being hyped up, but it never made it's way here. I have the better part of an entire work following Jace, Kallist and Liliana too (oh, LOTS of Liliana) through the rest of this story, that will get posted in it's entirety when and if I ever manage to finish the whole beast. For now, enjoy this small part of it. Let me know what you think. And go pick up a copy or nine of Swordspoint after you're done.

Jace sneezed. “What a wretched place to live.”

Beside him Kallist laughed and let the biting cold wind sweep around his legs while Jace scrambled to catch his scholar’s robes and pull them in properly tight around him as they walked. It was early afternoon now and the narrow streets were - not crowded, they were never crowded the way the Middle City or the University streets were - but populated none the less with the usual nere-do-wells of varying degrees.

Jace hardly paid them any attention since most seemed to instinctively give Kallist a wide birth, whether because they recognized him for who he was or simply read something in his carefree, easy confidence that they didn’t care to test.

They’d left Kallist’s rooms above Liliana’s, since Kallist suspected the demon woman of Riverside wouldn’t appreciate them starting trouble in her establishment and trouble seemed to be the only constant around his scholar look-alike. It was lucky for Jace that Kallist had never shied away from a little bit of harmless mayhem.

Jace led the way and they chatted aimlessly and good naturedly, continuing along the lines of Jace cursing the weather and Kallist chuckling and responding with something humorous generally to the effect of ‘just wait ‘til winter really gets here.’ All the while Kallist couldn’t help but be mildly impressed that his scholar actually managed to navigate them to his chosen destination after only being in Riverside a… week, maybe two at the most. He knew it hadn’t been long before they’d run into each other. Thankfully, probably, given the circumstances in which they had met.

Kallist was more impressed by degrees when they arrived: the sheer fact that Jace hadn’t actually been shanked the first time he’d been here was enough to make Kallist reconsider his initial assessment of the snarky scholar. Sure he had little in the way of fear and self-preservation, that much was obvious, but Kallist was beginning to think there was maybe something to that rather than just a careless lack of common sense.

He followed Jace into the tavern without comment, his cloak pulled over his shoulder. It was another tavern like Liliana’s that had once been the cellar of the derelict town house that loomed above it - but that was where the similarities ended. The tables were laid out with dice and cards and surrounded by spectators making very little effort to hide their knives or, in a few cases, true swords.

Kallist eyed Jace sidelong. He simply shrugged and nodded in the direction of one table in particular.

For a moment Kallist thought he might have to fight their way to the table, the crowds were so tightly packed, but Jace didn’t seem to be phased as he squeezed between the muscled mass of potential violence with a preternatural ease that the Swordsman himself couldn’t have managed. He was caught largely on the outside portion of the throng when he heard a snide, local voice drawl.

“Mr. Scholar.... I thought we had an agreement.”

Jace didn’t seem bothered by the obvious undercurrent threat in the man’s voice as he pulled out a sad-looking wooden chair from the table and took a seat opposite.

He wasn’t any physically larger than Kallist, maybe even bordering on Jace’s level of half-starved thin, but even from a distance Kallist could see the twitchy need to do violence that shadowed the man’s every action.

“We do.” Jace responded plainly. “You said that if I ever beat you at your tables again, you’d ‘Flay my flesh from my bones, rip out my eyes and break each of the little bones in my hands’, right?” He flicked at a bit of dirt out from underneath one of his nails.

The fiend across from him fumed. “So you thought you’d just-”

“Waltz back in here and try my luck? Yeah. I did.”

The man’s eyes went wide suddenly. He recovered quickly enough, scowling and snarling back at Jace across the table. Something about exactly what Jace had said unsettled the man, more than just interrupting him would have, Kallist gathered. But for all of his swordsman’s observation he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it had been.

This certainly was turning out to be an interesting business proposition.

“Are we playing or not, Tybalt?” Jace drummed his fingers, sitting back in a gesture of nonchalance obviously intended to provoke.

It worked.

“Fine.”He spat the words out like a curse before withdrawing a battered deck of cards from behind the lapels of what had probably been a very fine jacket when Kallist’s grandmother had been alive. “But we use my deck, and I deal.”

Jace shrugged and spread his hands in agreement.

Tybalt, as Jace had called him, smiled revealing the sharpest set of teeth Kallist had ever seen in a human mouth. He danced the dog-eared cards between his thin, nimble fingers. Catching them in practiced motion against cracked and dirty nails. All the while watching Jace across the table with a look that Kallist had come to associate with starving, rabid alley-dogs.

“What do you have to wager then, Scholar? This is no poor man’s table.”

Jace nodded, the almost serene smile still placidly in place as he laid out each of the large silver and garnet emblems down onto the table before him. One by one, and each with the audible, resonate clack of silver.

“You wanted them before, didn’t you? I could tell. “ He added, without specific explanation. Tybalt seemed, again, slightly taken aback before his rogue’s guff fell back into place. “Here’s your chance.”

Kallist doubted the scholar’s insights were incorrect, but again he felt as though he was missing some of the lines of the conversation. He remained silent in place a few rows back in the crowd, however. This was Jace’s show after all.

Tybalt produced gold pieces via some mid-level sleight of hand and stacked them on the table top. It was a surprisingly generous amount, but still, Kallist suspected, less than the true worth of Jace’s baubles.

Jace didn’t push the issue. Just nodded. 

“Deal.”

Tybalt sneered, shuffled the cards once more in his twitchy fingers and did so. 

Kallist had never been much of a gambler, at least not with cards as a proxy. He was unfamiliar with the rules of the game that was being played. They seemed complicated and neither player gave much explanation behind their actions as they drew, discarded or laid cards down. The color of the cards seemed to denote some meaning, with Tybalt seeming to favor the red cards while Jace looked to exclusively be playing blue cards after, or in response to his opponent's moves. Kallist wasn’t sure. There were other cards as well. He’d seen black and white and one other, maybe green, but neither player seemed to be keen on placing these cards. Instead they discarded them to draw extras from the deck or shuffled them away entirely.

Kallist didn’t need to know the exact intricacies of the game to recognize Jace’s prowess. Despite the fact that the object of the game seemed to be laying down cards, he played his almost exclusively after Tybalt had laid one down or revealed one to either force him, by some rule or distinction Kallist couldn’t fathom, to discard the played card or take it back into his hand.

Both players were separating their cards laid down in piles of four, so at the very least the general rule of four of a kind per deck seemed to have carried over.

As the game progressed Jace was quickly gaining the upper hand. His expression hardly flickered from the small quirk of a smile he’d had at the game’s outset. Tybalt on the other hand was gnashing his teeth and turning a very peculiar shade of red in the face - Kallist half expected he might grow horns. He was starting to realize why - nearly every card Tybalt played that may have allowed him to gain some ground: lay down another set of cards, Jace had something in his hand that he could lay down casually to prevent it or muck up whatever strategy Tybalt had tried to devise.

It reminded Kallist of nothing so much as swordplay. There was infinitely more skill in the in the riposte than in the attack., His hand twitched to the hilt of his sword, still more or less hidden by his cloak. There truly was more to his wayward scholar than any of these thugs around them realized.

It went far beyond simple luck-of-the-draw. Jace always seemed to have the right card in his hand to prevent Tybalt’s next bid to score. He didn’t bother with every card his opponent played either. He held his hand always for what seemed like the key play of his opponent’s strategy. Risky - if he guessed wrong about which cards to counter the whole game would blow up in his face. But Jace never seemed to guess wrong, or at least he hadn’t thus far. Was he counting cards? Keeping tabs on which were played and which still remained to be drawn, in addition to the ones Tybalt had currently in his hand all the while planning which of his own cards to play?

Kallist was impressed to say the least.

The deck was dwindling and Tybalt had the sort of rising rage and panic behind his eyes that Kallist recognized as desperation. Then the man drew and his expression twisted into a wide, sharp-toothed grin again. Kallit felt his pulse jump. He turned that feral expression on Jace, who didn’t seem to be fazed by it but…

“I hope you weren’t too attached to your jewels scholar…”

Tybalt placed the card he’d just drawn. It completed a set of four he’d had for some time. He’d already tried to complete the set once before, and unsuccessfully thanks to a play by Jace. 

The swordsman scowled. With only four of each kind in the deck here was no way that he should have been able to draw another. He remembered the dog-eared cards and the easy, over-tense quickness with which Tybalt had shuffled the cards. Glancing around at the crowd around the table, Kallist saw no response in the gathered onlookers. They either weren’t following the game as closely or didn’t care.

His hand tightened further on his sword hilt. Jace’s card counting wouldn’t be able to account for a fifth card. And his hand was getting low on cards.

“It’s a shame too…” Tybalt drawled. “I was almost looking forward to making good on my promise if you did manage to win.”

But then Jace laughed and Kallist’s attention instantly flicked back to him. The serene smile he’d worn during the game had finally cracked into a broad grin of his own.

“Oh, you’re still more than welcome to try.”

He laid down the first of the last two cards he held. Miraculously, by some bit of gambler’s luck Kallist had to assume, Jace did indeed have a card to counter Tybalt’s last play.

But the scoundrel still snarled back, evidently undefeated. It took Kallist a bit to realise why. Jace’s last card was only able to bounce Tybalt’s card back to his hand. If Jace couldn’t end the game with the last card in his hand, Tybalt would win on his next turn simply by replaying the same cheat again.

“I thought you were supposed to be smart scholar, don’t you remember the rules?” Tybalt teased, fingering his game winning card almost lewdly.

Jace’s expression didn’t falter.

“No, I remember them just fine. Let me know if you need me to explain them to you.”

He laid down the final card of his hand: a draw card. Kallist must have missed something, all that card allowed Jace to do was draw before the end of his turn. Tybalt would still win when he completed his set.

Jace drew the card. The last card of the deck, Kallist realized. His eyes darted around, convinced now that he’d misunderstood something, even if he hadn’t the slightest idea what.

There was a tangible moment of silence that passed between the men seated at the table that rippled out over the crowd surrounding them. In the quiet, pregnant pause Jace stood and collected his winnings from the center of the table. He pocketed his pendants, but he made a show of glancing across to Tybalt before dropping each of the gold pieces into his left hand, producing louder and louder clinking sounds as his palm filled with gleaming coins. Jace paused before doing the same with the last piece, instead tossing it on the wooden table and catching it in his hand on the exaggerated bounce in made.

That did it.

The quite broke instantly into cacophony: yelling, swearing chaos for a few moments before Tybalt brought the crowd to heel with a truly inhuman screech.

He stood so fast that his chair clattered with a thunk to the ground. His sword was drawn and Kallist nearly impressed with his speed. Nearly. Tybalt level the blade at Jace.

“No one.” He was shaking and snarling to the point that Kallist wondered whether speaking was physically painful. “No one walks out of here with my money.”

He stalked around the table to Jace, who stood his ground.

“Draw your sword, if you’ve got one.”

Jace shrugged. “I don’t”

Kallist smiled, side-stepped his way out from the crowd. Drew his sword.

Show time.

“I do.”

A dozen conversations sprang up around them.

“The scholar was alone last time.”

“Brothers?”

“Who is that?”

“Doesn’t matter, no one’s gonna beat Tybalt.”

It didn’t seem to matter that the crowd was with him on his home turf, when Tybalt turned to Kallist his eyes were wide-blown bloodshot white with pin-prick pupils. Attention darting between the Swordsman and the Scholar, the crowd making largely the same back and forth.

Jace cast Kallist an amused look over his shoulder, stepping back only slightly, but enough to make his acceptance obvious.

“My fight.” Kallist confirmed, leaving no room for interpretation. He met Jace’s eye with a casual, careless nod, but his focus was elsewhere. He scanned the crowd around them, growing now in eager anticipation of a swordfight and bloodshed. Jace would be safe for now.

Ignored, Tybalt yowled. “Fine.” He gritted out between the gnashing of his inhuman teeth. “I’ll just have to settle for skewering your stand-in double. More fun for me. What do you think you are, some kind of real Swordsman?”

Kallist spread his arms in half shrug half open invitation that Jace suspected was purposely intended to be reminiscent of the one he’d made at the card table earlier.

Tybalt surged forward to take immediate advantage of the poor guard the cocky gesture cost Kallist. It wasn’t a bad idea and the quickness of Tybalt’s lunge probably would have caught another Swordsman off guard. A slower Swordsman, or maybe a stupider one.

Not having the time to bring his sword to bear, Kallist sidestepped the attack instead of bothering with a late parry. Turning to see Tybalt’s momentum carry his sword point a harmless few inches past Kallist’s left shoulder.

The crowd was attentive. Almost the moment Tybalt had swung they’d started in on their own games:

“Five on Tybalt!”

“I’ll take that.”

“Easy odds!”

“Make it seven for me.”

“Two says the other one runs!”

“Who is the other one?”

“It almost looks like-”

“Who cares? Ten says he doesn’t live through the fight.”

“Fifteen says he does.”

Kallist smiled, and not just because he’d recognized Jace’s voice as the last.

Tybalt recovered quickly, the speed of his turn due more to blind fury than skill. But enough time had passed that this time, when Tybalt swung in for another strike, Kallist’s blade was ready. With a ring of steel he caught Tybalt’s blade with his own in a parry that was more of a physical exertion that he would have expected of a different opponent.

Most Swordsmen used their opening exchanges to play out their opponents, to get a feel for the other man’s skills and, ideally, find a fault in their form that would lead to an opening when they went on the offensive. All the while trying not to reveal too much of their own style for the same reason.

There was none of this in Tybalt. Whether it was because Jace had riled him past the breaking point earlier or just some personal preference for quick and immediate violence, Tybalt was swinging for blood at the outset. That fit Kallist just fine.

He could understand and even respect the immediacy with which Tybalt fought. He wasn’t always in the mood for the theatrics of showing up an opponent in some flippant display of skill either, just for the benefit of a crowd. But Kallist’s empathy ended there.

Tybalt pressed forward with a rapid volley of thrusting strikes of utterly non-specific aim. To him it seemed that any strike was a point in his favor. He wasn’t wrong - injuring an opponent was an effective enough strategy. Not only did wounds hinder performance but in formal, patronized fights first blood was often enough to call the match. As Tybalt continued his relentless forward assault Kallist highly doubted the latter would be the case here.

He spared a glance in Jace’s direction as he blocked a wide, high swing. That suited him just fine.

The crowd had opened marginally to allow them room to maneuver, but they remained close pressed.

“Fight you idiot!”

“Get him Tybalt. Go on!”

“You’ve got him on the run.”

“-whoever he is…”

This place must not see many real sword fights.

Tybalt came in close then, trying to crowd him in to score a strike. Kallist let him. When he swung in low for his knee, Kallist caught Tybalt’s blade close against the quillons of his own. He followed with a clever riposte he’d devised after watching Firebrand disarm a few thugs down by the docks with a clever bit of wrist work of all things, it turned the dynamic quite well. 

It was only Tybalt’s twitchy speed that saved him from a punctured lung, managing to get his arm back up and between himself and Kallist’s blade. He could have taken an easy open slash against Tybalt’s upper arm, but Kallist wasn’t trying to wound his opponent.

Tybalt recoiled, seemed to realize at least how close that last exchange had been, if not how much ground Kallist had been willingly giving up the whole time thus far.

Around them, the crowd roiled.

“What was that?”

“I’ve never seen it before!”

“Could it-”

“Who is-”

Then someone said it.

“Holy god. That’s Rhoka.”

His name ripped through the crowd like fire over spilled spirits.

Tybalt froze for a moment, eyes impossibly wider as realization caught up visibly with bloodlust. The rabid dog expression he wore shifting into something else entirely. Kallist allowed the briefest of pauses, the marked silence was really the only confirmation the crowd needed and just enough time for Tybalt to come to terms with the fact that he was fighting for his life.

It was the only courtesy he’d get from Kallist.

The moment turned and passed. Kallist shifted his footing and moved, his grey eyes alight, but exactly what with was undefinable. He struck from Tybalt’s left side and though he once again managed to block the strike Kallist had been after, the defense was sloppy and lacked the proper follow-up. Kallist let him recoil backward, but not so far as to allow him space to relax.

If the crowd had been convinced before of Tybalt’s ability, their assurance was rapidly dissolving as Kallist pressed his advantage. Odds were changing audible around them, as if to add insult to inevitable injury. He gave this shift a moment’s attention and judged it as harmless. 

Tybalt was truly manic now - and while Kallist knew that a rabid dog was at its most dangerous when cornered, he also knew the same was not true for Swordsmen. Fear made you stupid. Fear made you sloppy.

Kallist’s mistake was in assuming that Tybalt was more Swordsman than mad dog.

He had noticed quickly that Tybalt always favored his right side; when he attacked his left was far more exposed than Kallist bet he realised. Likely he’d been able to compensate thus far with his, not entirely insubstantial, speed against lesser opponents. 

It would be from that side that Kallist would find his opening.

He waited.

Tybalt, perhaps taking his relent as a sign he was tiring, came back on the offensive with renewed, desperate rancor. His left hand dropped back past his hip- more of an opening that Kallist had expected and not the kind of stance a Swordsman would take at all.

“Kallist!”

The abruptness and alarm of Jace’s voice made him turn and look away from Tybalt, already shifting his stance to find the Scholar in the crowd. He hadn’t expected any trouble from the others, not yet. That would make this more difficult.

Just as his mind was already planning a fight on two fronts, there was a brilliant flash from his periphery. It would have been blinding, if he had been looking directly at it.

But he hadn’t been. He’d been looking for Jace who was, Kallist picked out the blue of his robes amidst the grimy browns and grey of the crowd, completely… fine.

Later. He noted. They’d talk later.

There was barely even a slight dottiness at the edge of his vision when he turned back to Tybalt: caught, not red handed, but with a left hand coated in a layer of black, smouldering ash.

Kallist moved in fast, not bothering to correct his stance, hardly needing the proper Swordsman’s footing to put down a mad dog. His blade moved in a proper flash of steel, Tybalt’s guard coming up too late to protect his left side.

But that didn’t matter when Kallist swept his strike high and put the point of his sword through Tybalt’s eye, his arm following through and driving the steel deep. There was barely time for Tybalt to cough out what might have been a screech of pain or anger before his body hit the ground.

Kallist kept a tight grip on his sword as it slid out of the entry wound with the gravity of the body’s fall, making a sickening, wet sound as blood and brains burbled out of the hole he’d made.

He didn’t expect cheers and he didn’t get them - they’d been on Tybalt’s turf after all, but he could hear the metal sounds of coins being exchanged. Specifically he could pick out Jace’s particular chuckle among the grumbling din that put a smile on his face.

Not wanting to interrupt the Scholar while he collected his redoubled winnings, Kallist pulled a small rag from somewhere on his person and gave his sword a cursory wipe-down. His own shirt was miraculously blood-stain free, and he wasn’t about to trust any of the cloth here or even the fabric of that once-fine jacket not to dirty his blade further.

“That was quite a show, Swordsman.”

The voice reminded him almost of Liliana’s but with none of the veiled subtlety, or indeed any subtlety at all. 

He sheathed his sword in one clean, fluid motion and turned to the woman.

She was tall, and dressed in torn red and black harlequin. The same kind of itch for casual violence in her that he’d seen in Tybalt during Jace’s card game.

“I try.”

“You succeed, evidently.” She quipped back, eyeing the corpse he’d made with all the habitual casualty that a butcher denotes to a side of beef. She stepped closer, offering a pointedly sharp-nailed hand. He took it.

“Exava.”

He nodded. He didn’t give his name in return since, if she’d been watching, she’d know it already.

She had. She did.

“So, you’re really Kallist Rhoka then?”

“It seems that way.” Kallist responded coolly, but he knew he smiling in spite of himself. It was hard not to be at least a little self-satisfied with his reputation.

The woman took her hand back from his in the same way a snake slithers, lingering and undeniably reptilian. She leered back at him, and were sharp teeth just the norm with these people or-

“Well, I’ll just consider myself lucky to have seen it. Not every day that you get to see a… friend’s brain get scrambled with such brutal efficiency.”

He would have been worried about retribution if she wasn’t so utterly nonchalant, that and the way that her eyes were raking him up and down.

‘Convenient.’ Kallist noted and let her continue.

“Tybalt was… interesting. But I was honestly getting bored anyway. I was looking for an opportunity to trade up.”

She laid her hand on his arm and flashed a few more shark teeth when Kallist didn’t pull away or recoil.

“And I am very fond of blades-”

“Kallist.” Jace practically materialized at his side, evidently having finished collecting his additionally-won gold. His voice was so clipped that the glare he was boring into Exava was really an unnecessary addition.

She got the idea. She wasn’t so easily persuaded though. Her nails dug into Kallist’s shirt sleeve.

“Mr. Scholar, I’m sure you can find another little card game somewhere? Rhoka and I are having a conversation.”

“I could.” Jace responded icily. “But Kallist and I are done here.”

The Swordsman was very tempted to roll his eyes, and he probably would have if the whole fumbling display wasn’t hopelessly endearing, thinking to himself: ‘Well, that’s that question answered at least.’

“That we are.” Kallist nodded, freeing his arm easily from the woman’s clawed grasp. “Nothing else much worth doing here.” He added with an open grin, hand coming up to rest on Jace’s shoulder and it was worth it for Jace’s reaction alone - to say nothing of the way Exava’s face scrunched and twisted.

He let Jace lead them out of the tavern, only half succeeding in smothering the laughter that bubbled up when he heard a man ask from somewhere behind them “So, did you find out if they were brothers or-” only to be smacked by Exava who grunted out a low snarl. 

“They are not brothers.”


End file.
